Amit Blogs

Not Just Another Blog

XIMB’s flagship event Envision 2010 saw the launch of the magazine X-ite. The theme for the magazine was ”Innovation In IT”. Check out my article on Innovation In Rural India (Page 38) on which I give my views on the scope for innovation in the rural market and the pointers to be kept in mind when …

Happened to watch a beautiful film today, the Oscar nominated Marathi film – Harishchandrachi Factory. The movie is the story behind the making of the first Indian feature film – Raja Harishchandra. The movie in a light hearted way portrays the struggles Dadasaheb Phalke, had to face to make his dream of producing a motion …

Reva, started off with a bang : The first electric car in India and the people behind the car were confident of the success of the car. Plans were set and the forecasting team estimated that 1500 cars would be sold by the end of the first year. Three years after its launch, Reva barely …

The article won the first prize and was published at MBASkool for the HR Magazine of LBSIM and also by FMS Delhi’s HRegatta – HR magazine. Introduction One of the most valuable assets of any company are its employees. Retaining these employees and getting the best talent possible to join their organisation should be among the …

CAT 2010 results are out. It just seems like yesterday when I was grumbling about CAT 2009 results, saying how unfair they had been and discussing with friends, that instead of having an online exam like this, they would be better off distributing lottery tickets. Hundreds of dreams crashed. Efforts gone into the drain. One …

Diwali is here. It is that time of the year, when the spending of most Indians increases – buying gifts, new clothes, sweets, jewelry, etc – that time has arrived. And when consumer spending increases, all the big brands are out there fighting to ensure their wallet share increases. Most top brands would be having varied discounts and offers, and also ad campaigns run specially targeting the “Diwali Shopper”. Below are some of the best ads this Diwali – a common point across them is they have built an emotional connect rather than just a product feature connect.

# 1 – Pepsi’s Gharwali Diwali

Targeted at the millennial generation which despite having so many means to connect, still stay disconnected with their family. This ad would urge you to spend Diwali with your loved ones If you are of the emotional types and away from home, keep a box of tissues handy. However this ad would have been a better fit for a travel company, rather than a beverages one.

Using a soulful, haunting background score to its advantage – this ad targets those who would not be able to make it home this Diwali due to the geographical distances. Again perhaps the storyline fitment would have been better for a communications carrier rather than a chocolate maker.

If you are even slightly active on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook or Instagram – then you would have definitely come across videos of celebrities dunking themselves with an ice water bucket in a bid to support the National ALS Organization. This campaign by ALS has not only become a viral hit but the ROMI (Return on Marketing Investment) for this is unbelievable – the ALS Organization in a matter of few weeks has received donations worth $7.6 million compared to $1.4 million last year. Now that would make any CMO proud.

While every viral campaign does need that bit of luck to hit the tipping point and accelerate into virality, here are a few key social media marketing lessons which one can take away from the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

1. Keep It Simple But Unique- the message as well as the action point of the ALS campaign were pretty simple – Dunk yourself with a bucket of icy cold water, challenge 3 of your friends to do the same, and share the video on social channels. So you just needed a bucket of icy cold water, a camera for recording and an internet connection to post the video online. The simplicity of the challenge led to maximum participation as the barriers for entering this challenge were low. The challenge being simple also ensured that the videos shared were not longer than 100 seconds, considering the short attention span of the YouTube Gen,this ensured maximum views and a high viewer engagement. The Ice Bucket Challenge though simple was also remarkably unique, it was not another “me-too” campaign. It had this sense of uniqueness and a stamp of originality on it. Even the ALS campaign hash tags were short, simple and unique - #StrikeOutALS and #IceBucketChallenge.

2. Keep the Element of Fun and Craziness - Simple should not necessarily mean boring, that is what the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge showed. Seeing common people and celebs dunking themselves in ice water was a fun sight. There was also ample scope of creativity as shown by Bill Gates and Paul Bissonnette (Paul did take the challenge to an all different level) to do the challenge in your own creative way. As celebs starting challenging one another to do the challenge, there was also an element of surprise – as to who the celebs would challenge, making it all the more interesting

Just a few weeks back I happened to revisit the amazing Sixth Sense video (it was infact my introduction to the TED series) by Pranav Mistry, the occasion being a talk on creativity and innovation.I remember when I first watched it, I could not help but get amazed by the gadget developed and the thought process that must have gone behind it. This was simply perfect and straight out of a sci-fi movie. I remember sharing this video across with all my friends and each one of them was equally amazed. Below is the Sixth Sense video for you, if you have not already seen it before -

But when I watched the video a few weeks back, there were two questions that came to my mind- “Why Haven’t We Seen A Working Prototype of the Sixth Sense Device Yet?” and “What Happened To This Brilliant Guy – Pranav Mistry?”

While I Googled a bit for the first question and found that Sixth Sense was easier said then done, my second question was answered when a friend posted on Facebook that Pranav is the mind behind Samsung Galaxy Gear. Wow, so the man was all set to make his mark onto the consumer market, I could not wait to see another amazing concept and this time around a working prototype of it. But alas, I was disappointed.

1. It Replaces Your Watch But Without the Essential Features Of One – Pranav himself mentions this, the watch is “an object we have loved and relied over centuries” and that a watch speaks about our individuality and our personality. The Gear basically destroys this core aspect of a watch. Just by changing the wristband color of a watch, you cannot create differentiation. I would definitely not like to have a watch that is seen on every other wrist and which is so rigid in its design. Also the fact that we wrap only one watch around our wrist means that it is a binary situation here. So if I had to choose between a Kenneth Cole and a Gear, the Kenneth Cole wins hands down for me.

Although I do not have any market research to back this, but I am sure the target audience of Gear ( corporate, business professionals), prefer the analog variant of watches than the digital one. Digital is something that is more of a kids watch.

Is the device water resistant? We take it for granted that most of our watches are. Pranav does not say anything about this, but considering the electronic devices involved I assume it not to be water resistant. So on a rainy day perhaps the Gear will not adorn your wrist and lie wrapped up in your backpack.

Also who the hell charges watches? Do we not already have enough devices to charge, than to add another one to the list. Considering that the Gear lasts for only one day, you might well have to be prepared to charge your watch everyday before going to bed. Is the consumer really prepared for such a behavior change?

2. It Is Not Ubiquitous – Currently it is integrated only with Note 3 and while in the future it maybe integrated with other Galaxy products, this makes the Gear device completely useless if you do not have a Galaxy tablet. So as such, Gear is nothing but a fancy add on to the Galaxy tablets.

3. User Behavior Not Considered While Designing - I believe either no great deal of research was done on user behavior before defining key features of the Gear or the user behavior took a backseat while technology was driving decisions. For example – While Pranav marvels about the camera, I do not find that working, unless you are targeting investigative journalists here. By our very action, we need to see through the lens what picture we are capturing and not jsut point and shoot.

Would like to hear from you guys on what you feel about the Galaxy Gear? Will the device change the watch market just like cameras in phones redefined the camera market? Or will this be another fad that will die a quick death? What changes in the device do you think can turn around the tables for G

If there was one thing I would never forget about B School life, it would be participating (and winning ) in B School competitions. The time spent in researching, brainstorming and finally arriving at a solution to the business cases has been one of the greatest learning experience in my 2 years at XIMB.

Here is a presentation I had given to my junior batch on my learning’s from B School competitions. Thought of sharing this on my blog as well, if at all it might help anyone else – I will only be glad!

Let me also take this opportunity to thank my seniors – Ashutosh, Sudip and Shreejit – for not only providing inspiration but also providing valuable guidance when I needed it.

Also thanks to all my team members in competitions – Kumar Gaurav, Paramdeep, Sidharth, Mansi, Suman, Sachet, Debasish. I had a great time working with you all

So do I miss B School competitions now? How can one, in the corporate world – every day seems like a Competition – with new challenges waiting to be embraced.